Requiem of the Lost
by PhantomKat7
Summary: One-Shot Even the best can be shattered.


Just something I wrote when I heard Tomorrow by SR-71 and after I read some Danny Phantom fanfiction. I think Danny being unable to save someone, even with his powers, would tear him. He is just fourteen, after all. D:

C + C is greatly appreciated. :)

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Requiem of the Lost

Dash Baxter picked up his victim by the collar of his white shirt and landed a hard punch to the boy's right cheek. Danny Fenton was sent from his fierce grip and to the school's floor as a crumpled heap. The blonde walked towards the raven-haired boy, his initial adrenaline fading away now that he landed the first punch. That was the reason that when he stopped before Danny, he noticed the teen made no effort in getting up. Danny simply laid there, his face away from Dash's and his limbs limp as a rag doll's. The amethyst-eyed bully frowned, his expression mixed with anger and confusion. Grabbing Danny by his shirt again, he brought him to face level, fist already raised.

Haunted, ocean-blue eyes stopped him right in his tracks. Framed by hanging, ebony locks of hair, they were distant and glazed. When he did punch Danny so hard in the chin that it made his head snap back, those colored orbs were still blank and unfocused. Dash shook the lighter boy roughly, his irritation melting into a level of puzzlement he had never entered.

This didn't make any sense. The Fenton kid always had a couple of words to say to him when they engaged in their usual fights. They were always bored and slightly frustrated, and he always wished that Danny would shut his mouth to make the beating go faster. But now that Danny was actually silent and unresponsive, it made his skin crawl. It was like pounding someone unconscious whose eyes seemed so muddled with…depression? Why in the world did a mere fourteen-year-old carried despair?

"Hey, Fenton, your freaky, vampire girlfriend got your tongue?" he mocked, grasping his overconfident attitude again to utter these words. "Do you need her to cheer on your pounding?"

Normally, Danny would snap as he defended his friend, or even roll his cerulean eyes in a cocky manner if the school day didn't go so bad. Danny merely looked up in acknowledgement, but his body was still as lifeless as ever, and his eyes seemed to stare past Dash. This reaction, or lack of, sparked a newfound anger in the bulky quarterback. It angered him that Danny was so unaware of the fight, of the way his face began to slightly puff up and in the manner a bruise was forming on his jaw. Yet, Dash briefly paused to remember that Fenton seemed unaware of his surroundings when he confronted him a few minutes ago. With that, Dash's face screwed into a scowl. Danny was supposed to groan in pain when he was hit, he was supposed to wince when Dash held him against the metal lockers.

He was supposed to act like any other teen in the hands of a bully.

He was supposed to act just like he did everyday.

He was supposed to act like the geeky and wimpy Danny Fenton he had known since elementary.

He was not supposed to act like something terrible haunted him from inside.

He was not supposed to act like a ghost.

"What's wrong with you?" Dash almost shouted into Danny's emotionless face. His victim's lack of emotion made his words slightly falter; they did not seem as anger-driven as before. "Why are you like this?"

Danny raised his head more until he and Dash were eye-to-eye. He seemed to regard him as though he suddenly realized someone was with him. Just when Dash thought Danny had tuned out his words, the smaller of the two blinked, and a flare of sadness welled up in his eyes. It did not shatter his haunted look. If anything, it reinforced it, strengthened it into a wall that separated him from reality and trapped him in his own world.

"I couldn't save her," he breathed, each word weighed by an emotion Dash couldn't exactly decipher. "I tried, but I couldn't save her."

Danny looked down, and Dash saw him looking at his hands. Since he had confronted him, they were tightly clenched, but now, Dash could see that his nails were bleeding as dirt encased his fingers and palms. Dried, ruby blood covered his pale skin, and cuts marred his hands. Dash took a sharp intake of breath, almost releasing the black-haired freshman in surprise, but the youth merely clenched hands. The nails that threatened to fall off dug into his already blemished palms, and his blank eyes narrowed half-heartedly.

"Save who?" Dash couldn't help but ask, a shiver suddenly running down his spine. This wasn't how Fenton's daily pounding was supposed to go; Danny words weren't supposed to make him shake with a coldness he never knew could encase his body

"I couldn't save her," Danny repeated. His voice shook as he balled his fists tighter. His knuckles bordered on a dangerous shade of white. "She was right there, just a kid with her mom, and I couldn't get there in time."

This time, Dash did drop Danny to the school floor. The whispered words struck him like blades through his heart. He stepped back, eyeing the now kneeled Fenton with horror in his wide eyes. Every uttered phrase was haunted, just like his eyes. It made him feel saddened and terrified all at once, and it was all because it was coming out of Danny Fenton, wimpy Danny Fenton.

"I couldn't even dig her out," the boy chocked out, his eyes still trained on his hands. He slowly brought them to his face, and when he did, Dash could see his eyes were now immersed in a pool of emotions that swam too fast for him to discern every feeling Danny was experiencing. Anger, sadness, frustration, they all flickered in a teen he never knew could experience such things. As thought disgusted by them, Danny let his hands drop to the floor, his gaze following them so that his hair masked his face. "I am no hero."

Tears that glowed an eerie emerald fell to the floor. With that, Danny Fenton's shoulders shook with silent sobs. When cries were finally ripped from his lips, they echoed through the school's halls as gut-wrenching wails that made Dash's heart tear in two. It was a requiem that grew softer but never lost its meaning.

And just like that, Dash Baxter lost sight of the geeky kid he thought he knew and saw a spirit broken by the cruel hands of fate.


End file.
